John Diamond, the columnist and author who chronicled his struggle with cancer with humour and what he always insisted was ordinary cowardice, not courage, died from his illness yesterday. The 47-year-old journalist, whose weekly column in the Times won praise for the directness with which he confronted his illness, was admitted to the Royal Marsden hospital in London on Wednesday. After spending some time with his wife, the food writer Nigella Lawson, he lost consciousness on Thursday. The couple have two children, Cosima, seven and Bruno, four.

Surgery on his tongue had left Diamond unable to speak, but he continued to communicate vigorously in writing until days before his death. In an email circulated among friends two weeks ago, he informed them that he would be returning to hospital for more chemotherapy but joked that he hoped to be in remission "long enough for Glaxo Wellcome or Boots to come up with a cure".

In what proved to be his last column, published a week ago in the Times, Diamond described the course of treatment he was about to start. "Next week I start chemotherapy again. Three lots of it at three-weekly intervals as a puking outpatient," he wrote. "And this time my hair will fall out, just like a real cancer patient's, and I'll have to start wearing one of those jokey baseball caps that child leukaemia patients always wear when they have their pictures taken by the local paper."

Friends and colleagues, led by Tony Blair, paid tribute to a man whose repeated successes in overcoming earlier bouts of throat cancer led many to believe he might survive for several years more.

"The prime minister and Mrs Blair were saddened to hear the news of John's death," Mr Blair's official spokesman said in a statement. "Their thoughts and prayers are with Nigella and the children, who have lost a much-loved husband and father. His many friends will recall not just his humour but the extraordinary courage he showed as he fought his illness."

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said: "He always denied being brave, but of course he was immensely brave. He charted his encounter with cancer (he refused to call it a fight) in a remarkable way - painfully honest, painfully funny and sometimes just pain-filled." Last week he had attended a party organised by Tina Brown, editor of Talk magazine, where he was "scribbling one-liners, eyes full of mischief, living the life he had left to the full. It was an extraordinary life."

Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, said in a statement: "John Diamond brought all his skill as a journalist to report for the Times from the frontline of the cancer war. He shed unique light on a dark disease. That light will be John Diamond's lasting legacy."

Alan Yentob, director of drama and entertainment at the BBC and a close friend of Diamond's, said: "He was someone who lost some of the faculties most critical to his life - his voice, when he was a broadcaster who loved talking; Nigella is a brilliant cook but he could never taste any of that - and yet during that period he was more essentially himself than he had been before."

Born in Hackney, east London, to a biochemist father and artist mother, Diamond, trained and worked as an English and drama teacher but entered journalism by talking a post on a property newsletter into a job on the Sunday Times, where he quickly developed a reputation for fearsome productivity.

"John in hospital, having chemotherapy, taking liquids into a stomach tube, could still write a better, funnier, more interesting column than 90% of people on Fleet Street," said Victoria Coren, who adapted the book he wrote about his illness - entitled C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too - into a stage play, A Lump in My Throat. The BBC said last night that a TV adaptation of the play would go ahead, as long as Diamond's family agreed.

Ruth Rogers, co-owner of the River Cafe and godmother to Cosima, recalled a party she and her husband, the architect Lord Rogers, organised in 1999 for the couple's 10th anniversary. "People thought it might be the last time they would ever see him, and were worried it was going to be a wake before the death - but of course John and Nigella walked in and everybody realised it was going to be a fabulously happy occasion."

Roger Alton, editor of the Observer, said: "He was the most lovable man I've ever met. Before and even after he had cancer, and while he was ill, he was easily the chirpiest, funniest, most charming and generous person in any gathering."

Cancer specialists also paid tribute yesterday to Diamond who, together with the columnist Ruth Picardie - who wrote movingly in the Observer of the breast cancer that eventually killed her - broke a journalistic taboo in describing the minutiae of daily life with a terminal illness. Gordon McVie, chief executive of the Cancer Research Campaign, said Diamond had "explained the treatment and diagnosis processes and the whole cancer journey in a way that lifted people's spirits and gave them hope."

Diamond was a vociferous critic of alternative therapies and those who offered what he saw as false hope for cancer sufferers. "The lack of cure is a fact," he wrote in 1999. "Yes, I might go into spontaneous and total remission, and I might also win the national lottery, which has about the same sort of odds. The cancerous cells left in my body couldn't give a damn whether I'm determined to live for ever or not."